For one gossip hound, 'Mayhem' Miller's arrest prompts soul-searching

“Naked MMA Fighter Arrested After Allegedly Causing ‘Mayhem’ in Church,” read The Huffington Post, which like Walmart, I will never willingly admit to patronizing even if you catch me in the act. TMZ, which first broke the story of Jason Miller’s arrest on Monday, followed up with the scintillating pictorial feature entitled “Fire Extinguisher MAYHEM Before Crazy Church Arrest.”

Click your way through the slideshow, and you see some very tame photos of the so-called aftermath, including a close-up of the fire extinguisher in question and a shot of the church itself from the outside. Both look exactly like what you’d expect a fire extinguisher and a church to look like, but by the time you figure that out you’ve already given TMZ the click and thus justified TMZ’s suspicion that, yes, people really do want to see this stuff.

It’s still strange to me when the outside world turns its attention on the MMA community. Often it’s the result of a bizarre incident in which the headline is too easy to resist. “Rampage” Jackson goes on a rampage. “Mayhem” Miller causes mayhem. Don’t even get me started on War Machine. When mainstream media outlets take to plastering the troubles of MMA fighters all over the front page, I get defensive. It’s one thing for us to wrap ourselves up in salacious stories about pro fighters – we’re family. When those outsiders start doing it, it just feels dirty.

It’s especially difficult now that it’s Miller’s turn to be dubbed CRAZY by the Internet. That’s because I actually know him. We drank beers in a Las Vegas bar where some local band did a barely recognizable Adele cover. We ate at a steakhouse in Houston where businessmen in suits kept glancing nervously at our table each time Miller used his outside voice to express a passionate opinion on healthcare reform or Nick Diaz. That’s not to say we’re the best of friends, but it is different when you know for a fact that the subject of an unsettling news story is an actual human being.

That might seem obvious, but it isn’t. When I hear about Charlie Sheen going off the deep end or Lindsay Lohan crashing her car into the nearest inanimate object, that’s not real to me. Those are stories. The people in them might as well be fictional characters. Their self-destruction – however troubling it might be to their family and friends – is entertainment to me. It’s something I read about on the Internet when I’m procrastinating, a passing amusement almost instantly forgotten.

That’s a weird and kind of gross way to look at a person’s life, and it only becomes more so when the story suggests the possibility of real danger. Take this (alleged) incident with Miller, for example. If you heard that an acquaintance of yours had been arrested naked in a church on a Monday morning, what would you think? Best-case scenario, it’s a wild night that went from ill-advised to criminal with a string of bad decisions. Worst-case scenario, the explanation becomes more and not less complicated with the release of a toxicology report. Either way, you’re concerned for him and for his family. You hope they’re all doing OK, though you know they probably aren’t.

It’s different when the person in the headlines isn’t anyone you know, especially if he or she happens to be any species of celebrity. Famous people – whether they’re sports stars or actors or people who have played a version of themselves on some reality show – have struck a certain bargain, we figure. They get to make money on TV, and in turn we get to think of their lives as public property. They are fodder for Facebook posts and Twitter quips as we see fit, and that’s a vital part of the deal. It seems fair, at least until you think about it for even half a second.

I’m no better. Even while looking through the church photos on TMZ (the website that never uses a period when ellipses will do) and thinking to myself how sad it was that the misfortunes of a man I knew to be a genuinely kind and intelligent person were now idle entertainment for millions of strangers, I noticed a link to a story about Chad Johnson’s domestic-violence arrest. His wife has made a statement? Well, naturally I have to read that. Is the recording of the 911 call out yet? Yep, right on time. Other people’s lives are never more fascinating than when they veer toward tragedy. Give me details. The more damaging the better.

But man, not “Mayhem.” I actually like him. He’s a person. I remember he told me once that he wanted to take some writing classes at the local community college so he could write his own memoir rather than dictating it into a recorder and having some ghostwriter type it up. Who but a person would do such a thing? He’s going through some tough times right now, both with his arrest and what appears to be the end of his fighting career, but he’s not like these other famous jerks on the Internet. Except that he is. Or rather, they are like him. Or better still, we are all like each other, and maybe it wouldn’t kill us to remember it every once in a while, especially in difficult times.

And yes, I know how that sounds. The dude on the Internet who makes a living writing about other people is suddenly complaining that we’re not compassionate enough toward one another. Still, what if that were true? Or what if it weren’t but we acted as though it were anyway? What’s the worst that could happen?